Humanitarian Action Quotes

Promoting and protecting human rights internationally is not just a matter of principle or morality - doing so also serves our national security interests.

Forget the statistics...we have to do more. You cannot look these children in the eye and see how desperate is their situation without wanting to help.

It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.

Humanitarian action cannot be held hostage to political ends.

I think we are challenged in how we define humanitarian action today and how we relate to long-term needs. We are also confronted with legitimate expectations from the people who want us to respond far more thoroughly to their basic pleas than we would have done in a much more contained form of conflict.

To respond to people's needs, humanitarian action has evolved from a temporary fix to a long-term safety net.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and for justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

I believe we're living at a time in human history where it's just simply unacceptable that children wake up and don't know where to find a cup of food. Not only that, transforming hunger is an opportunity, but I think we have to change our mindsets … I would like you to join with all of humanity to draw a line in the sand and say, "No more. No more are we going to accept this." And we want to tell our grandchildren that there was a terrible time in history where up to a third of the children had brains and bodies that were stunted, but that exists no more.

Use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.

The issue of corruption in the humanitarian system is not an issue which is fundamentally different from dangers of corruption in other areas. One of the best ways to strengthen accountability is to engage in principled and law-based humanitarian action.

If we don't like the Human Rights Council, then let's not fund it. We should pick and choose cafeteria style which groups we want to help.

I'm a doer, and whether it was the tsunami in Sri Lanka or the earthquake in Indonesia, I was always saying, 'I should be there; I should be helping out.'

Whether our task is fighting poverty, stemming the spread of disease or saving innocent lives from mass murder, we have seen that we cannot succeed without the leadership of the strong and the engagement of all.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective.

So what if it's risky? It's the right thing to do. What we're talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them.

More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: 'Give them something to eat.'

It is necessary to take the further step of using the right to intervention as a preventive measure, to stop wars before they start and to stop murderers before they kill ... We knew what was likely to happen in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo long before they exploded into war. But we didn’t act. If these experiences have taught us anything, it is that the time for a decisive evolution in international consciousness has arrived.